Conference Commissioners Ruin the Regular Season

So I’ve blogged on this before (just search my tags at the bottom) but with the powers that be came to an agreement on the college football playoff and after looking at it, I’m wondering how this is good for the sport compared to the BCS?  Now let me start with the pros; it’s a playoff and it will make a ton of money.  Ok that’s about it.

The commissioners said they didn’t want to diminish the regular season the way that college basketball is diminished BUT with this top 4 model have totally made 75% of the college football season worthless.  They will argue saying that they opened up the championship to more than 2 teams.  Yes they did, congrats on that.  But they’ve also opened it up to a lot of scrutiny and meaningless football. 

Here’s where they went wrong.  They made the regular season worthless.  How you say?  The Championship is now open to about 15 teams per year.  The teams will be selected by people (who have biases) not on the field.  Remember we griped that Auburn didn’t have a chance to prove it on the field in 2004?  That’s what we want, play it out on the field.  Not in polls or computers or anything.  Do games in the ACC matter?  Nope.  Do half the games in each conference matter anymore?  Nope.  Thank you commissioners of the major college football, you gave us this --- most of the season means NOTHING now:

Here's what I'd do to fix their mistake.

I would like to see all major conferences have a championship game, either you all have it or you don’t have it.  So Big XII, look for a few more teams.  And you can see that I don’t include the Big East or Mountain West here or Notre Dame.  The Big East (like the WAC) is a going the way of extinction in FBS.  Schools are hoping to the Big East for 1-2 years of AQ status chances and then they get to fight over the Pinstripe Bowl. 

I think you’ll also get to 14-16 team conferences too, the SEC and ACC are already there.  Here’s how I would see it falling.

Notre Dame as much as I’d hate to see it would be in the Big XII with Louisville (UL-KU basketball fans start drooling).

Boise State & BYU join Utah in the Pac-12.  Now there are some teams in the Big East, Conference USA and the MWC that are left out, but you just don’t matter in major college football.  I’m sorry but you don’t.  If they could create a huge Conference USA and become relevant somehow then maybe give them a shot in there.  Maybe the lower tier FBS schools have their own playoff, FCS has theirs. 

Now with my model of only conference champions allowed, the National Championship is now opened up to 66 teams.  That’s a lot of games that now have meaning.  Then you play out the season.  The conference title means something!  Getting to the conference championship game means something and winning it means something.  You advance! 

Now what I did here obviously can be rotated by conferences and who gets the byes and who needs to play the extra game but how is this not what college football should be?   The conferences get to control the title games.  The other games should be played on campus then or if you want to do them in lower tier bowl locations or bid them out, do it.  Let the losers of the conference title games continue to the traditional bowls.  But the champions would play on for the National Championship!